​Say you want to access your work computer from home, or your home computer from work. Here are the easiest ways to do that. All of these will work on Windows and Mac, Teamviewer and VNC will work on Linux based operating systems.

This is my favorite. I use it. It’s fast and full featured and as long as it’s used “non-commercially” it’s free. Unfortunately - according to their FAQ - that means you can’t use it to access your work computer. I use it to help family in other states with their computer problems and to access personal computers around my house when I am not at home.

Teamviewer offers some awesome features, like the ability to set up a VPN on the fly. It offers remote printing, but I haven’t tried it so I can’t vouch for it’s reliability. If the remote printing is like any of the other options here, it’s spotty at best. A lot of these features really aren’t totally necessary for most users, but they are nice to have.

If you do want to use Teamviewer commercially, it’s $795. So you may want to consider another option if all you want to do is work from home.

These two are the best known remote access programs, and they are similar in most other ways. I feel generally the same way about both. They are user friendly and easy to use. I have set up remote printing on both of these and they are both unreliable. They often drop the printer that you have set up and you must reconnect to find it again.

As for choosing one, they both have free trials of their pro versions. LogMeIn has a free version that you can drop back to if the pro version is more than you need. They are both risk free to try, but their pricing models may play a role in your decision. LogMeIn is $15 per month or $70 per year. GoToMyPC is $10/month or $100/year.

​​Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection -This allows you to connect from a Mac to a Windows PC but not the other way. It’s built into Windows and not entirely user friendly, you must set up port forwarding and know your ip address, unless you’re connecting to something on your local area network and then you just need the computer name. If you want to connect from a Mac: here’s the download site. This is free, but obviously limited in support.